


Compline

by Maia



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Silmarillion - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-04-23
Updated: 2002-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-12 11:21:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/124318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maia/pseuds/Maia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of his life, Elros reflects in a letter to Elrond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compline

Even on the clearest days, he could no longer see Avallone.

  
His eyes were failing him, as was his body. He moved more slowly,  
thought more slowly, spoke more slowly. His children and grandchildren  
grew impatient with him. He did not blame them; he had once been the  
least patient of young men.

  
Elrond's voice echoed in his mind down the centuries, "Stop looking  
out the window and _think!_ " And his own childish voice replying, "But history  
is so dull! I care not what _has_ happened; I care what _will_ happen!"

  
He had recognized early that he would never be a scholar. Far more  
fun to practice his skills as a swordsman outdoors than to sit in a dusty  
library poring over irrelevant stories. Far more interesting to look  
ahead to future possibilities than to look back at what could not be  
changed.

  
Far less painful, too.

  
Now his joints ached, and he could no longer outrun his limitations,  
or his memories.

  
He studied the paper in front of him, not knowing how to begin.  
For the first time in his long life, he was trying to commit something of  
himself to paper. He was not a man of words but a man of action. But  
now action was lost to him; his time was over and his children's begun.  
He received all honor, yet he knew they considered him to be irrelevant;  
they smiled indulgently at his stories. He had taught them to look to  
the future, but now he was left behind in the past.

  
He looked at his hands, old and wrinkled and no longer steady. How  
strange, on Elrond's last visit, to see his brother still young. -- _I  
always wanted to catch up with him, and now I am old while he is just at  
the beginning of his life. I always looked forward, and laughed at him  
for looking back, but now I have nowhere to look but back_.

  
He knew now that he would never see Elrond again; he had meant to  
summon his brother for one last visit, but he knew he would not last that  
long. And so he would borrow his brother's gift, and write.

  
But he knew not what to say.

  
Thoughts flowed through his mind, but would coalesce into naught but  
disparate threads.

  
 _You dwelt in memory even when we were children, yet you will continue  
in the present long after I have become a memory._

 _  
You wanted me to remember Earendil - father - but it is you who studied  
father's - Maglor's - past, and I who learned to sail and spent my life  
exploring new shores, guided ever by the stars._

 _  
I wished to seek and do and make, never to dwell on unpleasant  
thought, but now in age I have lost all but the memory I scorned. And  
yet would I have it any different? I sought adventure, the stirring of  
the blood and the excitement of the moment. And now I have another  
adventure ahead, a journey beyond the confines of the world. Again my  
heart quickens at the thought of something new._

 _  
Have you ever felt the stillness at the heart of action? Have you  
ever been at sea in a storm, the wind roaring about you, knowing your life  
might end at any second, but that does not matter, because the world is  
only water and boat? Have you ever been in a battle feeling that you  
have all eternity for the next sword-thrust?_

 _  
What knowledge is there in books that cannot be found in the bitter  
teaching of experience? To hold your newborn children, and wonder at the  
world they will see, that you will never know. To know that you can give  
them your love, but that they belong to the future, not to you. To watch  
them grow into manhood while you decline into age. To know that you will  
pass away as the leaves on a tree, but the tree will remain. To know that  
the future is yours to shape, and yet you will not see its fruit._

 _  
Strange that you will see what I have wrought when I will not. What  
will the deeds of my descendents be? I have tried to teach my children  
to seek out all possibilities, to never say that something good cannot be  
done, to always strive beyond themselves. Those were the lessons I  
learned in youth, from Father Maglor, from my own unquenchable thirst for  
motion and change, passion and excitement, new life and new worlds._

 _  
The lessons of age are not ones my children wish to hear. But that  
is all right. They will learn when their time comes._

 _  
We are so limited, we mortals. Though it seems to me that you are  
more so, you who are bound to Arda. For what is the value of a moment  
when you know there are so many more ahead? How much more precious is  
life as I see its end so near. I held my great-grandson in my arms  
today, and saw the past and the future as one in this child. There is  
wisdom and peace in knowing I must soon move on._

 _  
And yet, and yet. It goes by so quickly. There is so much I will  
never see, so much I will never know._

 _  
But you also will not know everything, even with all the ages of Arda  
to learn. Will you ever have to accept your limitations as I have?  
Perhaps it is you who never cease to strive, while I must finally accept  
that my striving is done._

 _  
All things end in time. Do Elves truly see that? Will you not try to keep  
things as they are, even when you should accept that what you loved is lost?_

 _  
I do not regret my mortal choice. I have lived richly. And perhaps it is  
better that I do not know what my legacy will be. I have built a great kingdom;  
I do not have to watch as it crumbles beneath the waves,  
as all great kingdoms eventually must._

 _  
And when it does? My children will re-build. For that is the strength of men:  
not in memory, but in hope. We can see all that we care for lost,  
and yet find the strength to begin anew, not for ourselves, but for  
our children and their children._

 _  
I look upon the earth itself and all that is in it, and see my own  
mortality. We are all dust. As are you, my brother, though you may not  
yet be forced to see it. All that you build is dust, too. Strive not  
to keep what you build from falling. Rather, strive to keep Hope alive  
in the darkness._

 _  
Remind my children, when they forget, that even in their darkest hour,  
there is always the possibility of new beginnings._

 _  
There is so much more to say, and yet I find I do not have the strength  
to say it. My body fails me, I who always gloried in my physical  
power. So I will simply say this:_

 _  
I love you, my brother._

 _  
Please forgive me._

 _  
Know that only when you have lost both the past and the future will you be  
truly wise._

 _  
I hope we may meet again, beyond Arda, where memory and hope are one._

 __

 _Elros_

  
It was the first time since childhood that he had signed his name without  
title or lineage.

  
He got up from his desk and went out onto the balcony. He collapsed into  
a chair. He felt exhausted; he had put his last strength into the writing.

  
He looked up at the stars. The night air smelled fresh. He breathed  
it in, suddenly knowing with a sense of profound peace that it was his last  
breath.

  
Spring was coming.

  
In the eastern sky Earendil rose. In a few hours it would be dawn.

  
*


End file.
